In the technical field of imaging, it is common practice to display an image while additionally displaying one or more annotations in or near the image. The annotation may be a symbol or a structure that is associated with a region or landmark within the image, and may take various forms, such as a line or point for spatially identifying the region, or text for providing information on the region. For example, in medical imaging, an image obtained by magnetic resonance imaging may have an annotation in the form of a circle displayed on top of the image that identifies an abnormally growing tissue region within the image.
The image may be, e.g., a three-dimensional image. An annotation in a three-dimensional image may be a one-dimensional annotation, i.e., a point, a two-dimensional annotation, e.g., a line or text, or a three-dimensional annotation, e.g., a volume. The annotation may be located in the image by means of a geometric reference to the image.
Various options exist to display the annotation in or near the multi-dimensional image. US 2006/0215888 A1 discloses a method of displaying a medical image with one or more additional symbols. The symbols may be used to, e.g., mark the edges of a volume. The method comprises rendering, with respect to a reference plane, three-dimensional volume data on a display, determining a distance between a region associated with the symbol and a picture element from the reference plane, scaling a size of the symbol according to said distance, and displaying the scaled symbol in or near the picture element.